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The challenges facing the Greek economy and the ensuing intervention from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help withstand further damages from the fall-out look familiar to many African bloggers. During previous crisis, the IMF was involved in proposing structural adjustments to struggling African economies, with various outcomes.
Reactions from African bloggers range from cautionary tales from past experiences to lessons that ought to be learned for their own regions.

Le petit nègre notices that Europe was reluctant to ask the IMF to step in during the Greek crisis. He is wondering why asking the IMF for help was such a hard decision for a European country when it seemed to be rather common event not so long ago in Africa. Here is why he thinks European countries are worried about an IMF prescription for Greece (fr):

In the case of Greece, the isse is that there is a strong resistance to devalue the Euro currency as fast as it has been done before for the CFA (African Financial Community). Therefore, the European leaders find themselves cornered and forced to help Greece, one way or the other.

At least, let’s agree that the conditions are eerily similar: budget deficit, public debt, high unemployment, commercial balance in the red, bad management of public finances and top it all, tempered public data !!
Seriously, if this was Mexico, Argentina or Burkina-Faso, the mighty IMF would have already prescribed competitive devaluation and structural adjustment to help the public finances.

Although the sub Saharan African region has 10 times the number of inhabitants of France, they have the same weight inside the IMF. The region has only two representatives on the IMF board of governors and they have to voice the opinion of 48 countries [..] One can imagine the difficulty of getting 48 countries heard when they only have 2 representatives.

Our current growth model based on the following sequence: credit- consumption- debt is obsolete. It is not helped by political systems and governments that are seemingly incapable of posing the foundations of a new development model [...] Therefore a crash in 2010 seems inevitable because, as Kenneth Rogoff explains, the failure of another state ( or several others), seems unavoidable: the problem of this systemic crisis of unfit growth model will soon become more acutely apparent.